


My Heart Above My Head

by queenklu



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Singing, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:33:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4663377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of course the stars lived in the sky and of course the sun was coming up tomorrow. Of course Steve Rogers had a soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is part one--part two is half written, in Steve's POV, and has a happy ending. This part...does not, but it is a complete story in itself. If that's going to bother you, I'd suggest waiting for part two. I can't promise a timeline on when that will happen but it _will_ get done. 
> 
> Title from [Fools Rush In](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDEtNgV13aA) by Glenn Miller 
> 
> Fools rush in  
> Where angels fear to tread  
> And so I come to you my love  
> My heart above my head
> 
> Though I see  
> The danger there  
> If there's a chance for me  
> Then I don't care

 

 

He must have been eleven or twelve years old when Steve's soulmark came in. Steve fell when he was running to tell Bucky, clutching his arm and babbling, and all Bucky saw was the blood on his knees, all he felt was the sudden clench of terror in his stomach.

“It's here,” Steve stammered, collapsing into Bucky—and Bucky caught him, of course he did. Of course he ushered Steve inside, got him into his room and shut the door. And if Steve didn't notice he was white as a sheet, well. Steve had other things on his mind.

“What's it say?” Bucky managed to ask. It was what you were supposed to say, right? Or maybe you weren't, maybe he shouldn't. Bucky clenched his teeth and fought back being sick, only eleven or maybe twelve and the whole world ending.

Steve was shaking, sweating. Bucky muttered curses he'd only ever heard his dad say and tugged up the blankets from his bed to wrap around Steve's narrow shoulders. “Stevie? Hey Stevie, talk to me, buddy, come on.”

Steve blinked, those heavy lashes of his working hard to stay open. “S'good,” he slurred, leaning heavily into Bucky's side. Bucky made himself—let himself—put an arm around Steve and hold him steady. “'S so good, Buck. Soulmate, I got a...I got one.”

“Course you do,” Bucky told him, as fierce as he'd said it every other time before. Of course the stars lived in the sky and of course the sun was coming up tomorrow. Of course Steve Rogers had a soulmate. “What'd I tell you, Stevie, huh? What'd I say.”

“You're gonna get yours too,” Steve murmured, words barely distinguishable from the mash of his mouth against Bucky's collarbone. Bucky squeezed his arm around Steve's small frame and didn't say anything. Not a single word.

Steve had been in the hospital when Bucky's soulmark came in almost a year before. Bucky looked down at the faint redness on Steve's arm now, the only sign anyone would see of his soulmark until his soulmate sang to him for the first time. Bucky's arm looked smooth and bare to anyone looking, anyone except Bucky himself.

_My story is much too sad to be told_ . Bucky traced the words on his own skin with his thumb and listened to Steve breathing soft and steady against his chest, waiting for the fear to make him numb.

~*~

“Maybe your soulmate is mute, or can't sing somehow,” Steve told him when they were seventeen, maybe eighteen, and Bucky had his feet kicked up on the bottom rung of Steve's barstool. They had cold beer and the dancing was starting to wind down—Bucky's collar was sticking to his skin, and even Steve looked a little flushed from the heat of too many bodies in a room.

The girls Bucky had asked to double with them were long gone. Bucky's girl had tried singing in his ear before the end of the first dance—Steve's hadn't ever opened her mouth, lips pinched thin like she was worried something might slip out and she'd get stuck with...with the greatest fucking guy on the whole planet. Bucky's angry silence sent them both packing six songs ago.

Bucky's gaze found the singer through the crowd, up there with the rest of the band while they got ready for their last song. Her soulmark was a line of dark ink trailing up her wrist, and the way she and the bass player traded glances back and forth like kisses made his skin hurt.

“Nah,” Bucky told Steve. “I'd know.” He did know, it was carved into his arm.

The week before some cops had found two dead boys down by the docks. Their right arms from the elbow down were so badly shattered from heavy boots and bits of pipe that authorities almost couldn't tell they had visible soulmarks, and a quick ask around town told the cops they didn't have girls they were stepping out with. Now they could write it off as justifiable homicide, keeping sinning deviants off the streets of Brooklyn.

“How come you never sing?” Steve asked, and Bucky blinked at him. Maybe the flush on Steve's cheeks wasn't just from the heat of the room—he didn't have much else to do while Bucky danced except drink. Steve played with the edge of his glass and didn't look up. “You never sing to the girls. How—”

“Because,” Bucky choked. “Because there's nothing for them to sing back, Stevie, I told you, I don't have a—”

Steve was already shaking his head, blond hair tumbling into his eyes even as he kept his head down. “I can't—Buck, that  _can't_ be true.”

“Stop,” Bucky said, meant it to come out like a growl, not like he was begging. “Stop, Steve. Knock it off.”

Steve closed his mouth. Every inch of him looked over-hot and miserable.

“Last dance,” Bucky got out, low and raspy, eyes darting anywhere else. “One more and then we'll head home.” He stopped when he got to his feet, a sudden low tug in his gut that said Steve might try to leave on his own. “Will you wait for me?”

Steve looked at him then, eyes sad and endlessly blue. “Yeah, Buck,” he said. “I'll wait.”

The itch building on Bucky's skin didn't ebb at all. Somehow he found the will to turn away, head for the far wall where he'd seen a young woman lingering on the edges, waiting for someone in the band if he had any guess. He asked and she said yes, and they stepped onto the dance floor just as the band announced last song.

“You've heard this one around,” the singer said, voice musical even when she talked. “Though maybe not the _whole_ thing.”

She nodded to the bassist, and he lead her into the song.

“ _My story is much too sad to be told,_ ” she sang, so sweet and slow Bucky felt it like a shockwave. “ _But practically everything leaves me totally cold._ ”

“Are you alright?” the girl in Bucky's arms asked, brown eyes knowing. Of course they would be; his feet felt like they'd been nailed to the floor. She glanced at the singer, then back at him. “Her soulmark's showing,” she offered, somewhere between helpful and lonely. “If you've already sung to her...”

Her voice faltered when she looked to the bare skin of his arm, sleeve pushed up because it was so damned hot in here. “Not from me,” Bucky made himself say, made his body try moving again until they were almost swaying back and forth.

“ _...fighting vainly the old ennui,_ ” the singer continued. “ _And I suddenly turn and see...your fabulous face._ ”

Bucky did not turn. His shoulder muscles locked up, headache spiking at the top of his spine. But he did not turn.

“ _I get no kick from champagne,_ ” she sang as the beat picked up, and Bucky finally recognized the song, the snatches of Ethel Merman he'd heard on the radio for the past...at least three years. God, his damn song had been on the radio for years and he hadn't even _noticed_. The singer's voice soared over the swell of other voices joining her—matched couples or young hopefuls. Around them some of the couples split up, faces wistful and bittersweet, and some stayed together just to dance, but one guy near the front let out a whoop and swept his girl into his arms.

“I knew it,” she laughed into his hair, “I knew it. _Amazing grace,_ ” she sang, and her fella's whole face lit up like the sun. Several people started to clap as the couple's soulmarks faded in for everyone to see.

“I have to go,” Bucky told the woman he was dancing with, and her smile looked even more understanding than he deserved.

He stepped outside, dragging in huge lungfuls of air. He waited until the song died down, until his hands stopped shaking. Then he went to get Steve.

~*~

They were twenty-three, or close enough, only Steve was different. He was so different he filled up Bucky's eyes until they watered, until he felt like he was choking. Not the first time he'd thought he was going to die over here in this war.

“You two fighting?” Dum Dum asked with a nudge, the third or fourth time he caught Bucky staring at Steve where Steve couldn't easily look back. Bucky startled, turned his stare to Dum Dum instead. Dum Dum shrugged. “He finally catch you sneaking extra rations into his bags?”

Bucky set his shoulders. “Steve and I are good. We're good,” he growled when Dum Dum flicked an eyebrow.

“My mistake,” Dum Dum said, holding up his hands. He didn't back away, though, and Bucky found himself grateful for a solid presence at his side, even if it wasn't the one he wanted most.

Agent Carter started gathering up her report, smile curling the sharp red edges of her mouth. God damn she was smart, smart as hell, and anyone with eyes could tell she thought Steve was swell. Bucky tried to breathe through his nose, past the bitter taste in his mouth, the taste of gunpowder from today's firefights. Bucky _liked_ her. It would have been so much easier if he didn't.

This was what... This was the best thing that could have happened. The one thing he should have known to hope for. The terror he'd carried around since he was old enough to know that boys loved boys and it got them killed, and he would die himself before he ever got Steve hurt—all of that was as good as smoke. Of course Steve had a soulmate who was kind and good and right for him. Of course that soulmate wasn't Bucky.

“Think he's gonna sing to her,” Dum Dum said, almost conversationally. Bucky kept his breathing calm. “I've heard him practicing. Poor girl, he sounds like a bleating cow.” Dum Dum chuckled, and Bucky bit back a retort. Steve's hearing hadn't been too good until recently, he wasn't gonna be the next Bing Crosby right off the bat.

“Good,” he made himself say and made sure he meant it. And he took himself for a walk with the image of Agent Carter brushing her hair back from her face while Steve's mouth stretched into a smile.

He walked until he could just see the campfire burning through the trees, until he found a fallen tree to collapse onto before his legs gave out. He put his head in his shaking hands, too tired to smoke, too sick with—relief, he told himself. Relief and maybe, maybe a little regret. Because who didn't want to think they had a chance of being Steve's soulmate?

The truth was—the truth was they'd done something to him. Zola and his men. They'd left him filthy and used up without even laying a hand on him, pain and starvation and whatever chemicals they pumped into his system leaving him as useless and raw as he'd always known he was deep down. He should've put two and two together long ago. That Steve's soul was too good for his.

All at once he was laughing, shoving a hand over the worst of it as his shoulders shook. God, he was stupid. Dumbest boy in Brooklyn.

He didn't—maybe couldn't—stop laughing. Some part of his brain had registered the sound of footsteps, so he wasn't surprised that someone found him.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve said, and Bucky wasn't surprised about that either.

It felt almost easy to find a smile for him—it was harder not to let that smile spread into a manic grin, a reflection of hysteria brought on by decades of useless dread. “Hey, punk,” Bucky said, sliding further down the tree to make a space for Steve. “Plenty of room.”

Steve sat next to him with a small huff of air, the small kind of sigh that meant Bucky'd done...something. Hard to get a read on Steve even before there was so much more of him to hide behind.

Bucky kicked his heels against the trunk, too tired to stop himself from drinking in the sight and feel of Steve close to him. It didn't matter now. None of it mattered. Steve was going to be safe, happy and healthy and loved the way he should be, and Bucky let the relief of that sweep over any sorrow he felt for himself.

“Hey,” Bucky said, nudging Steve's shoulder when he stayed silent, his big head down and blond hair falling into his eyes. “You hoggin' my log for a reason?”

Steve looked at him, blue eyes even bluer out here under the fat spotlight of a moon. “You need the whole log for something? Gabe told me you boys got lonely out here on the front lines but I didn't realize that extended to plantlife—”

“Shut up,” Bucky grumbled to keep from snickering, jostling him quiet. “'M not that kind of lonely, Christ.”

“What kind of lonely, then?” Steve asked, elbows on his knees and his face turned Bucky's way.

Bucky locked his teeth shut. If he started laughing now he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop. He shook his head, reaching for the words he knew came next— _dog lonely,_ he might've joked with the boys, _rock lonely. Tree lonely's gotta be one step up from dead, all those splinters._

Bucky shrugged, throat working on nothing.

“I think I'm gonna sing to Peggy,” Steve said after a moment, voice low.

For all that Bucky knew it was coming he still felt something lurch in his throat. Steve didn't sound—right. He didn't sound _happy_.

“Hey,” Bucky said, bumping his elbow against Steve's. It took longer than he felt it should to reach him—which one of them had moved away? When? “You don't gotta... You can get to know her first, get to know each other. Not knowing's half the fun.” He tried a grin on, even though it came out lopsided.

Steve shook his head. “We're at war, Buck,” he said, like somewhere in all the shit food and shit weather and blood caked under his nails Bucky might have forgotten. “There isn't any time. I don't want to string her along if, if I'm not her guy.”

“That's the worst horseshit you've tried to pull on me since we were twelve,” Bucky told him in a growl. “Of course you're her guy. I've seen the way she looks at you. Whatever decides our soulmates—they've always had a stunner for you in the cards, Steve Rogers. I can't think of a better dame than Carter, can you?”

Steve's mouth went a little soft, though his forehead stayed all wrinkled up. “No,” he said after a moment.

“So what are you gonna sing to her?” Bucky asked.

Steve gave him a look, even though he had to know Bucky wasn't asking Steve to sing for him—this was a fine question, Bucky'd heard plenty of guys with their heads bent together trying to plan out which song they were gonna sing for their sweethearts, trying to make sure their girl hadn't gone through life with some bawdy drinking song scrawled across her wist. Since time immemorial scholars had been debating which came first—the lyric or the song—and how. Best guess was a sort of collective consciousness. Bucky didn't have the brains to follow or the heart to care; he'd always figured it was fate, just fate, shitty and laughable and supposed to be wonderful, actually terrible, luck.

But if he was wrong about Steve being his soulmate, maybe he was wrong about a lot of things.

“I've got an idea,” Steve said after a moment, a slow crooked smile pulling at his mouth. He ducked his head, raked a hand back through his hair in a way that was so much the boy Bucky remembered it made his throat ache. “I think she'll get a kick out of it.”

Bucky's heart thumped in his chest until he shook it off. He'd have to retrain his body how to react around Steve once he and Peggy were bonded.

But in the meantime—“That's good,” Bucky said, knocking their shoulders together, “That's great. I'm happy for you, pal.”

“Yeah,” said Steve. He ducked his head, rubbed at the back of his neck before he twisted far enough to flash a smile Bucky's way. “Thanks, Buck.”

That weak smile tugged right at the weakest part of Bucky's ribcage, pulled the words out of him before he could properly think them. “Hey,” he said, ducking his head down to meet Steve's eyes. “Hey, Stevie, what's wrong?”

One time when Bucky was a kid he saw a butterfly land on a lilac tree, big gold and black wings fluttering from flower to flower. He didn't know why he thought of that moment now, seeing Steve's ridiculous eyelashes fanned across his cheeks—no, he knew, but there was no crushing shame afterward, no fear. Like looking at a butterfly, something he was never going to touch, didn't have to worry about hurting it.

“It's just,” Steve started, then gusted out a sigh with another of those tiny smiles tucked in at the end. “I've just never heard my song, is all.”

Relief swept through Bucky so hard it stole his breath. Relief like cutting your leg free from a bear trap, the kind of relief that meant you still lost a limb. It really... It _really_ wasn't him, then. No way Bucky'd ever heard a song Steve hadn't.

Not once had he ever let himself think of what song Steve had on his wrist—something sweet, probably, something that made him look down at his arm with that particular mix of fondness and exasperation—but he always... Wow. He'd really been so, so fucking stupid.

“Never?” Bucky repeated, lips numb. “Well, she's from England, right? They got a whole slew of songs over there we never heard of.”

Steve watched him fro a moment, not saying a word. “Right,” he said, then straightened himself up, rolling those big shoulders of his.

They stayed out there a few moments longer, until Bucky couldn't hide the shiver racing down his spine and Steve made them head back to camp. He almost wished he'd brought his smokes out there with him, so they'd have the excuse of sitting there together until the last ember died out.

~*~

The next six days were rough. Rough for Steve, who lost his Agent Carter to an assignment back at HQ before breakfast the next morning, let alone before he could set the scene and sing to her. They sure said goodbye with a lot of promises in their eyes, though, and the Howlies got in on ribbing Steve mercilessly as soon as her truck took off. Or as mercilessly as they dared, which was still mighty tame from how Bucky would've done it, if he'd let himself. Not an hour after that Steve got their own marching orders, and they had to break camp before their coffee got cold, heading up into the mountains with tin cups in their hands.

It haunted him, after. What he could have done differently about that sixth day.

Mountains meant a long grueling uphill march in thickening snow and thinning, cold air, and a lot of high ground the enemy could be waiting to attack them from. On that sixth day Steve took off for his usual first patrol to the north while Bucky went south and the Howlies made camp. Only there were no enemies to the south—not likely to be, either, seeing as the land cut off in a sheer cliff that ended in boiling rapids fast enough to churn up the snow falling through the air like cotton puffs. Bucky patrolled the cliff-edge for a while, peering over into the abyss just far enough to make sure there were no ropes or grapples or any other sign of life. The sheer drop made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, and he walked back to camp smiling, shaking his head at himself. It wasn't a big shock that he'd beaten Steve back.

On the edge of their camp was a tree. Thick-trunked, sturdy branches even a few feet from the bottom and going all the way up into the heavy, snowy canopy. Bucky smacked his gloved hands together, tried to get more blood in them. “Going up the tree,” he said, and Gabe gave him a nod over the fire he was trying to start. The rest of the boys were gone or busy, gathering firewood or setting up camp, so no one else saw.

His rifle only clattered against the branches once the whole way up, and he found a spot where he could sit and still be mostly out of sight for anyone coming their way. The smell of smoke and their last few sausages drifted up through gently falling snow, and after a while Gabe's sweet voice followed—something low and thoughtful, longing but not lonely. Everyone knew about Gabe's soulmate back home, dear Abigail who always snuck in something sweet with her letters when she could. Bucky hummed along quietly under his breath, the only kind of music he ever let himself hold inside his mouth now that Steve was back around.

Bucky turned his eyes to the trees, watching for movement, drifting in and out of the conversations below as Frenchie and Dum-Dum got into it over a deck of cards without a single shared language between them. The trunk at his back felt like sitting against a block of ice, but he set that out of his mind. Steve came back; Bucky filtered him out too, making sure he wasn't followed as the light got dimmer in the sky.

“—Mais tu vas chante pour elle, non? _”_ Frenchie's voice cut through the dampening snow. Steve, who'd been learning different languages in the evening, ducked his head in a laugh. Not that it took much translating; most soldiers knew at least fifteen different ways to say 'sing to her.'

"I'm..." Steve's smile was everything the posters and the propaganda films and the photographers never captured. That little punk kid Bucky grew up with, the one with bloody knuckles and scraped up knees who never, ever backed down from a fight. "Yeah," Steve said, "I'm going to sing to her. Someday."

Bucky settled his back against the trunk, tucking his nose into his collar as the Howlies offered congratulations.

“Which song?" Dum-Dum rumbled over the rest, "You got a plan?” 

Down went Steve's head again, hand at the back of his neck. "It's dumb."

A gust of wind stole away the next few words and Bucky's breath. It was too cold. But if he came down now he'd shatter this moment. “Honest, Cap,” Gabe was chuckling when his ears worked again. “If it's meant to be, won't matter what you sing.”

Bucky could almost see Monty's head bob through the trees—hey there was a thought, Steve could ask their resident Brit if he'd ever heard of Steve's song. Bucky made a mental note to suggest it. “I have to agree with Jones, Captain. My father,” he chuckled, “my father was so nervous when he tried to sing to my mother that he burst out with God Save the Queen.”

Jacques snuffled a laugh. “Ben Voyons?” Bucky knew that one, a sort of _Really?_ that Jacques should have employed more often, considering their misfit band.

“'God save our gracious Queen,' just there,” Monty swore, showing them the spot on his own bare wrist.

Bucky curled a smile against his coat. It felt good watching over them like this, keeping them safe. The tips of his ears were starting to sting; he'd left his hat down with his pack. A few more minutes and he'd join them by the fire. Or maybe toss a few snowballs down first.

“Je veux entendre cette chanson. Allez, chante pour nous, pour t'entrainer,” Jacques said. Bucky frowned over it: _I would_ something something _song. Let's go,_ something, then... _entertaining?_

“ _My story is much too sad to be told...”_

The voice was cracked, warbly, sung through a grin, and almost immediately shouted down by a chorus of 'No's. Steve laughed over them all, the full bright kind he couldn't manage without coughing before his lungs got better.

“That's awful, her life isn't sad!” Morita groaned.

“It's not,” Steve tried, “It's supposed to be—”

"Wait, isn't there some line in there about cocaine? Cap, you won't even try the soft stuff—”

"It's about _not_ doing cocaine, keep up, man."

"Listen here, Mr. God Save The Queen—” Dum-Dum started.

Bucky let the conversation fall away from him, heartbeat pounding in his ears until his whole body throbbed with it, like one big bruise. His skin hurt from the cold. His arm—

This was a joke. A sick, fat, cosmic joke.

“Is Bucky back yet?” Steve's voice floated up through the trees, through the sharp endless buzzing in his head. Bucky crushed a handful of snow into his palm, felt it turn to ice.

“He's around,” Gabe shrugged, because he was a good friend and secret keeper.

That was his cue.

Rage boiled up in Bucky's chest, at the universe, at—at _Steve_ down there, laughing and, and singing like he could, like—

The first snowball hit Steve on the shoulder, shattered into ice chips that sprayed against his cheek. Most of the boys leapt to their feet in alarm but Bucky nailed Steve again when he sputtered; by then they'd picked up on the trajectory, and the fact that Gabe was snickering into his gloves.

Steve turned his head up to look, and that image—Steve so small below him, so pink-cheeked and betrayed—lodged below Bucky's third rib. He threw another fistful of snow, scraping the branches raw to get enough, and let it fly. This time Steve ducked easy, and the snowball hit the ground and broke apart, blending seamlessly with the snow at Steve's feet.

“Bucky?” Steve called up, and maybe he could tell better than the others that Bucky wasn't messing around, but maybe he couldn't.

Dum-Dum tried lobbing a retaliatory snowball; it missed, but it was enough to jolt Bucky into realizing just how numb his legs were. Any longer in the tree and he risked not being able to get down without falling.

So he climbed down, one branch after another, any further thoughts of snowball fights stifled by Steve waiting for him at the foot of the tree. Of course his boot slipped against the bark not three feet from the ground, of course Steve caught him, steadying him with a startled, “You okay, Buck?”

Down on the ground it was easier to remember, or maybe just harder to stay mad, with Steve bigger than him the way he was never meant to be and somehow always was. “Just cold,” Bucky said, and didn't realize how true it was until his teeth gave an alarming chatter.

Steve's eyes went wide. He pulled Bucky in immediately, ran his hand up and down Bucky's back while dragging him close as he could to the fire. Dum-Dum gave up his own hat while Morita went for his blanket; Steve dropped it over his shoulders then pinned it in place with his arm, his body a solid wall of fire against Bucky's side. He always ran hot these days, but maybe Bucky was feeling it more now he was near hypothermic.

“Hate being cold,” he muttered after eating half a sausage which sat in his belly like hot coals. He was shivering now, and even he knew to recognize it'd been a bad sign that he hadn't been.

“I know you do,” Steve said, rubbing his back. Bucky let his head fall on Steve's shoulder, too tired to pick it up again. It felt too much and not enough like huddling together in shitty apartments when the heat went out, when Steve used to fit under his chin.

God. Bucky chewed and couldn't taste anything. His eyes stung with woodsmoke, so he let them fall shut, block out the world.

_Tomorrow,_ Bucky promised to himself,  _tomorrow I'll get Gabe to check my arm._ If Gabe could see his soulmark then...then as impossible as it sounded, he had to be Steve's soulmate. And if that meant making up a damned song to sing to Steve so be it. He was too tired to be scared of this anymore.

But if he wasn't...if Gabe couldn't see his mark, then it really was sheer dumb shitty luck of the goddamn fucking draw, that Steve would sing his soulmark in the middle of the mountains surrounded by all this goddamn snow. And not turn out to be Bucky's soulmate after all.

Bucky clenched his teeth together until he could breathe again without feeling like he was drowning. He wanted— It didn't fucking matter what he wanted. But _God._ He wanted Steve.

“You going to be alright for the assignment tomorrow?” Steve asked quietly, the shift of his shoulders enough to pull Bucky back into himself.

“Shut up, of course I am,” Bucky grumbled, dragging his blanket close so it covered Steve too. “Zipline onto a moving train, easy as a peach.”

~*~

_ 32557038 _ , Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the United States Armed Forces. He was twenty-four and born in Brooklyn and his best friend was Not this again,  _ not this, not— _

~*~

James Barnes and he was twenty-four and he loved

~*~

He was twenty...something, he was

~*~

He was

~*~

He...it?

~*~

Someone touched his wrist and laughed. Familiar words. If the story was too sad to be told, maybe it was good no one remembered it.

~*~

It was cold.

~*~

Who the hell was Bucky?

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WELP. We had an unexpected 4+inches of snow outta nowhere last night, which means everything feels a little magical, like I might update this fic I started overrrrr a year ago >.>
> 
> Fair warning, this is really just Steve's POV on the previous chapter, but if I don't throw it onto the internet I might never reclaim this piece of my soul. There is a part three with a happy ending in the works, but AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA we've seen how that turns out.
> 
> ACTUAL WARNINGS: internal and external homophobia, and near the end of this there are hints at what might be seen as suicidal idealation (Steve crashing into the arctic). Take care of yourself and read at your own discretion.

 Steve couldn't remember a time when he didn't pay attention to the words people sang. The phrases they chose or didn't choose, when they knew the time was right or if they didn't have a clue. He kept an ear out for the radio even though his hearing wasn't so good, and always flipped through newspapers and peered in shop windows to find their song of the day, of the week, printed up in clear bold letters.

“You don't have to worry, baby,” his mom told him, kissing him on the forehead as she tucked him into bed. “Your soulmate will find you.”

“But Bucky doesn't have a soulmark,” Steve said, wiggling his toes under the blanket. She smiled at him and he didn't like it much, the way she didn't take him seriously. A lot of people didn't, as the other kids in school kept getting taller and Steve stayed stubbornly small.

“It could still come in for him,” she promised, smoothing his hair back. Steve was only nine but he could tell she didn't think they'd match.

“When it does we're gonna tell each other and then we'll sing and we'll be soulmates,” Steve told her with all the surety he felt in every single bone in his body.

“That's not how it works, Steven,” she said, kind eyes tired. “Even if someone sings the right words your soulmark won't show unless it's meant to be. Soulmates are more than your best friend,” she said to his scowl before he could open his mouth to argue. “You'll understand when you're older.”

Steve didn't think so. He rolled over on his side, tucking his arm close to his head just in case his songmark chose this moment to come in, or the next one, or the next.

He knew it was Bucky. As soon as Bucky's soulmark came in they'd be okay. The two of them against the world, the way it'd always been.

~*~

Only Bucky's mark didn't come in. Years marked in the inches Bucky kept creeping over Steve's head, and Steve learned to stop asking. He hated that hunted look in Bucky's eyes when he did, the full-body flinch away and Bucky finding reasons not to spend as much time together for the next few days before things went back to normal.

He found out why, soon enough. Learned that their preacher never spat the word _sin_ as hard as when he was talking about boys who loved boys, girls who loved girls. Realized that other boys were only calling their future soulmates _she_ and _her_ and never _he_ or _him._

Some days it felt like Bucky was the loudest in the whole school: his soulmate was going to be tall and have red hair and red lips and knockers out to here and the other boys always laughed and cheered him on. Steve tried to hold onto the fact that he knew Bucky's secret, but it was hard when Bucky grinned so wide, even though it never reached his eyes.

When the boys remembered to ask Steve what he thought his soulmate would be like, Steve came up horribly, painfully blank. “I guess,” he said and touched his arm, “just somebody who loves me back.”

“You some sort of faggot?” Liam O'Riley sneered, and Bucky punched him so hard he splint his knuckles open on Liam's front teeth.

Which was only half as bad as the fight Steve got into when some of the boys started whispering about how not having a soulmark meant you were gonna die young, too young to find someone who loved you.

“That's not true!” Steve snarled into Ricky Dunham's lying face, and when Ricky and Liam started pounding on him because Bucky wasn't there Steve broke both their noses and stood his ground, because Steve loved Bucky, so that couldn't be true.

~*~

“I could sing to you, as practice,” Steve said to him with painfully practiced precision, and watched the blood drain from Bucky's face so fast Steve thought maybe he'd faint.

“Oh hell,” Steve said in the next wrenching breath, “I'm sorry Buck, I wasn't thinking,”—how in all the times he'd practiced had he not thought it _through_ —and when Bucky snarled, “ _Damn right you weren't,_ ” there wasn't anything to do but hang his head. Bucky was in for a lifetime of people 'practicing' on him if his secret got out, all of those songs and not a hope in hell of being anybody's soulmate. Using Bucky like a handkerchief and throwing him away.

Or maybe. Maybe Bucky was starting to worry about Steve too. Like his ma. When she asked him, some nights, “Remember when you were small and set on James Buchanan Barnes for a soulmate?” he always had a laugh ready, a shake of his head. She was worried, and now Buck could be worried too, and Steve felt his faulty heart kick up speed.

Bucky _looked_ worried, shaky-pale, like he'd just realized all this himself. Steve screwed up his stomach into a miserable ball and waited for him to take off, wondered if he'd see Bucky in a few days or a week or ever again. One of these days Bucky was going to realize Steve was more trouble than he was worth, why not today?

But Bucky shoved his trembling hands into his pockets and walked Steve home, and in the morning he was there with an orange—an _orange!—_ to split and share with sticky fingers, and Steve got five pieces and Bucky ate four. Steve never mentioned it again.

~*~

Bucky found the money special for Steve's seventeenth birthday and Steve still didn't have the heart to tell him movies were no good with his lousy hearing—they went and saw _Top Hat_ , and Steve didn't mind the muddled sound so much because the dancing was so good and Bucky sat so close. They walked out side-by-side, Bucky's hands in his pockets and his eyes on his feet as he tried a little soft shoe down the street.

“Watch out, Fred Astaire,” Steve grinned, feeling light in his chest the way he did after a bad cold.

“You're sure no Ginger Rogers,” Bucky volleyed back, the slap-shuffle of his feet more like stumbling than actual tap dance. Steve laughed until his sides hurt from holding in the big guffaws like he should, hand stuffed over his mouth and snickering into his knuckles, so it took a while to realize Bucky was humming.

Bucky rarely ever hummed. He whistled, sometimes bobbed his chin to some music inside his head, but humming was rare, humming was for late nights when Steve was feverish and barely remembered it the next day. Bucky's voice was clear, happy and bright, and Steve couldn't remember a birthday this good.

“Is that from the movie?” Steve asked. He thought he recognized it, something catchy and upbeat from the start of the show.

Bucky froze.

Steve remembered the first time Bucky stood up and was taller than him, not by just an inch but by what felt like a mile. That feeling came back like a stone sinking in his belly, pulling him back down to the dirt.

“What're you talking about?” Bucky said, scrubbing a hand back through his hair, looking up at the sky. “'Course it was. Wait.” His eyes cut to Steve, blinking wide and blue. “You're asking me for real?”

Steve looked down at his feet, flat and useless for dancing. He shrugged, hands closed into loose fists inside his pockets.

“It's _Putting on the Ritz_ , you don't recognize it?” Steve glanced up to see Bucky swallow hard, like he'd had to stop himself from—from singing the words.

Well. If Steve was in Bucky's shoes he probably wouldn't want to risk being Steve's soulmate either. Even if Bucky did have a soulmark, what idiot wanted to love someone like Steve?

That light feeling in his chest vanished, chased away by the ghosts of nights spent struggling to breathe. So he rolled his shoulders again, shook his head. He'd been caught up in watching Fred and Ginger glide and spin across the screen most of the movie anyway, it didn't matter if he'd been able to hear the music enough to appreciate it. He turned back toward home and made his feet move again, tried not to feel like it was some kind of luck when Bucky followed.

“We're not going back there, those speakers were like listening through a tin can,” Bucky announced, and a few steps later knocked his shoulder against Steve's. Steve smiled because he was supposed to, because it was his birthday and because he loved Bucky anyway, even though he shouldn't.

“I can't wait to meet your soulmate, Steve, she's gonna be a knockout,” Bucky said and smiled at him, all teeth. This was one of Bucky's new favorite games. “And I bet you she's a dancer. Next time we go out I'll introduce you around, alright? Or maybe we go to one of them singing singles clubs and you get lucky, what do you say?”

“Sure, Buck,” Steve said because Bucky's arm was slung over his shoulders now, but he couldn't make himself smile back.

The next time Bucky went out with a dame Steve holed up in the library with the registered lyrics catalogs and sifted through the endless lists, looking for his song. Bucky didn't want to be his soulmate even if he could've been. Maybe...if Steve found his real soulmate, then loving Bucky wouldn't hurt so bad.

He didn't find a damn thing—not a single lyric that matched up exactly to the words on his wrist—but that didn't stop him from coming back the next time, or the next.

~*~

So much changed after the serum—and so much happened, Dr. Erskine's murder and chasing the killer, a submarine escape pod and the spy's poison tooth, and Steve's lungs and his legs and his heart pumping stronger than ever, making him feel like he might fly apart—that he didn't notice until the nurse rolled his sleeve up to take his blood.

His soulmark was different.

 _Not different_ , he corrected himself, heart stuttering in his chest so bad he thought he might have kept the asthma after all. _Longer._

There was another line.

“Very interesting,” the specialist said, peering at Steve's arm like he could actually see the words. He ran a swab over the spot, did a bunch of fancy tests that ultimately made him decide this was just another enhancement of the serum. “So they will sing at least two lines of a song to you,” Dr. Yenkel shrugged. “It's not so different. Some people only have one or two words.”

 _Some people don't have any,_ Steve thought but didn't say. “Is there any way to tell if they're from the same song?” he asked.

“Why wouldn't they be?” Dr. Yenkel scoffed. “What, you think you have two soulmates?”

Steve thought... He didn't know what to think. He thought he loved Bucky, who didn't love him back in the way Steve still—sickeningly, selfishly—wanted. He thought he really liked Peggy. Maybe...maybe he could love her, if she'd have him.

“You looked worried,” Peggy said, ducking her head a little to get him to meet her eyes, even though she was shorter than him now. She smiled, reassuring and teasing all at once. “Have you never heard your song before?”

Steve felt his face go hot, wondered if the serum had enhanced that too, and for God's sake _why._ “Um,” he said and stalled out. No one had ever asked him so directly about his soulmark before. “It's—no,” he said.

Peggy seemed to shake herself, even though she still looked far more amused than sorry. “My apologies,” she said, one neat hand raised, “I didn't mean to pry.”

Steve focused on refastening his cuffs—fiddling with them, more like—until he felt like he could stand a little straighter. “Could've saved the doc a bit of time if I had,” he offered with a smile.

“It's probably a matter of timing,” Peggy said after a moment, linking her fingers together behind her back. “There is a war on, you know.”

Steve tried not to sigh. Stark and the scientists wanted to keep him here, running tests until they could replicate Erskine's serum. “Yeah,” he said, “That's what they tell me.”

He couldn't say that the offer of selling bonds was any better, but it felt more immediate, something closer to the front lines than a basement full of needles and no music at all.

In any case, it turned out the war bonds gals were sweet to him but not sweet _on_ him—they all had soulmates back home or overseas, the company couldn't afford to lose people when they sang on tour.

And they sang all the time, in the dressing room, in the dining halls, jazzy tunes before bed and showtunes in the morning. Some sang low sweet songs when the other girls couldn't fall asleep, some sang to their coffee or their lipstick or their stockings, cursing them out or complementing in turns. They sang to Steve, called him Ol' Blue Eyes as a joke because his eyes were blue but he couldn't sing a lick and it was good. It was _so_ good with ears that worked right, all the words he'd memorized but never known quite how they were put together in a melody. It left tears in his eyes sometimes, blinking out the window at the flat wheat fields rolling by.

He could listen to them sing for hours, for days, locked in a train car with nothing else to do except try to remember every show tune they've ever heard. Steve half expected—half hoped—that one of them would bust out with his song, but they never did, and he never asked, and when the boss told them they were going to the front lines Steve let himself feel excited, and didn't think about Bucky even once.

~*~

“Bucky?” Steve dragged in a breath, forced his strides longer as he rushed to the table, the body strapped to it. The lab was dark and the light was strange—he could be wrong, or worse, he could be—

Bucky stared blankly at the ceiling, but _alive,_ alive. “Bucky,” Steve said again, put his hand on his chest to shake him.

Bucky blinked slow, like the rare mornings he woke up after Steve when they'd been forced to share a bed in the dead of winter, when it was so cold the water froze in the tea kettle overnight. His smile—he _smiled—_ curled dazed and easy around Steve's name.

“It's me, it's Steve,” Steve promised, adrenaline thick in his throat. Bucky's grin only grew.

“ _Steve.”_

Steve had to focus to keep his hands from shaking too hard to rip the restraints off Bucky's arms and legs. They had to move, and if it felt like Steve's blood was singing it was only because it was his first time in a combat situation. And Bucky was _alive._

Rolling over looked like it hurt, clawed away the dreamlike smile on Bucky's face. He fell into Steve when he tried to stand, and Steve tore his gaze away from the grim line of his mouth, from the way Bucky fit under his arm. Words shook out of Steve like coins from a turned-out pocket: “I thought you were dead.”

Bucky was staring at him; Steve realized he'd never stopped. “I thought you were smaller,” Bucky said, and Steve hitched him closer, took on more of his weight, and for the first time Steve felt like everything—the childhood full of illnesses and the schoolyard beatings, the pain of the serum and the damn tights—had been worth it, _would_ be worth it, if he could only keep Bucky safe.

Saving people, defending his country, standing up to bullies as tall as he could. This was who he was supposed to be.

Peggy met them head-on at the edge of camp the next morning, raked him head to toe in a glance—took in Bucky at his side and the mud on his face—and Steve felt his skin go strangely tight. He couldn't wait to introduce them, couldn't wait to tell Bucky about her the way he'd already talked Peggy's ear off about Bucky. Maybe not exactly the same way, but—

“Let's hear it for Captain America!” Bucky cheered, and when Steve looked at him he felt like he could have sung anything, anything, just for the sheer joy of it. Damn the war, damn _everything._ He looked back at Peggy as the boys got up a hip-hip-hoorah and Steve didn't need any of that, but for the first time in a long time he thought about singing and meaning it, really for once in his life having a chance at something happy.

~*~

“C'mon Barnes,” Morita said, voice low, and Steve slipped from sleeping to wakefulness between one breath and the next. It was dark, still, the fire banked down at Steve's back. He could only see dim shapes of the other Howlies bunked down for the night.

“Nah, the boys are sleeping,” Bucky said just as quiet, easy as anything. Steve felt himself relax, thought he didn't fully know why he was tense. Maybe he wasn't as awake as he thought. His limbs felt leaden, everything half an inch from center.

“Might drown out some of Dum-Dum's snoring,” Morita grumbled. Steve heard him shuffle his feet and let his heavy eyes fall shut again. “I'd give anything to hear _Fools Rush In_ right now—hell, I'd take _Chattanooga Choo Choo_ over his racket.”

“Sing it yourself, then,” Bucky said.

“What's the matter, Barnes?” Morita asked, light and teasing. “Cap got your tongue?”

Steve opened his eyes.

There was a sharp scuffle, a soft _oof_ as something connected with Morita's ribs hard enough to drive the breath out of him, and then a chuckled mix of curses and apology. _Cap—_ Morita had probably said ' _cat_ got your tongue.' It made more sense.

Did Bucky sing out here? Did he sing to these men, to himself—out in the dark on a mission, in the morning over breakfast—did he sing?

Something small and ugly curled in his throat, and he tamped it down. If Bucky was comfortable singing now around these men that was good, that could only be good. Steve had always hated the way Bucky bottled himself up all the time—maybe he'd finally come around to seeing that not having a soulmark could be a good thing. It wasn't like he had to worry he'd bond with a random village girl by accident, or worse: a General, or a Nazi. It was good. Steve made himself swallow and shut his eyes.

Maybe Bucky had never sung around Steve when they were younger because...if Bucky didn't, then it was normal that no one did. Tomorrow he'd make sure, somehow, that Bucky knew he didn't have to hide this part of himself from Steve if he didn't want to.

Morita started to sing as quiet as he dared, his voice a little hoarse but honest, all his notes ringing true. “ _[Fools rush in...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKYKStouuBI)where angels fear to tread...” _ Steve recognized the song, first heard through a tinny radio on a train platform in Brooklyn in 1940. After a few moments Bucky started humming along, and Steve felt the low rumble of it in his chest, remembered waiting for that train with mud-soaked boots, rainwater dripping down his jacket.

“ _Though I see,_ ” Morita sang, barely above a mumble,“ _the danger there..._ ”

Bucky stopped humming. Steve made himself breathe again, shallow and even.

“ _If there's a chance for me,_ ” Morita sang, “ _then I don't care.”_

~*~

Steve wound his way back to camp, even his new light movements leaving crunching knee-deep footprints in the snow. He tracked the Howlies with his eyes—Dum Dum and Morita finishing a few booby traps, Falsworth and Dernier gathering wood—and made a beeline for the fire, where Gabe was frying up the last of their sausages on long sticks cut from the forest.

“Bucky back yet?”

“Nope,” Gabe said without looking up. He offered up part of a log to sit on, which Steve gladly collapsed onto even though it felt like sitting on a block of ice.

“Gabe,” Steve said slowly. He held his fingers to the fire, hoping for a little more warmth—he usually ran hot but he was hungry, having snuck Bucky's rations back into the dumb lug's own bag, and relying on fuel reserves seemed to seep the heat out of him first. He was still, he noticed, not wearing all his gear like Morita, like Gabe; didn't feel _that_ cold, yet. “Does Bucky sing?”

Now Gabe looked at him, kind brown eyes and a full tilt to his mouth. “Haven't heard him since we were captured. No, since after we got free; he sang plenty in the cells, before they dragged him off.”

Steve's hands ached. “Yeah?”

Gabe nodded like his head was heavy, like it cost him. “The other boys that got taken, they didn't have a soulmark either,” he said finally, and Steve felt sick, and furious, and small.

It wasn't surprising, he told himself firmly, that Bucky had shared his secret with the Howlies. No, the only thing surprising was that Nazis would care enough to pick off the unmarked soldiers first. The ones they thought no one would miss.

One by one the boys shuffled back to the campfire, Dum-Dum smacking his big hands together and muttering about the cold. Gabe's soft singing wove in and out of conversation, the sausages starting to smell like real food. Still no Bucky. Steve opened his mouth to ask again when Morita leaned over and patted Gabe's knee with the back of his hand.

“That's real good, man. That for your girl?”

“She's won and done,” Gabe laughed quietly, rolling up his sleeve to show his soulmark. “We didn't get a chance for the wedding before I shipped out, but I always knew it was gonna be her, she always knew it was gonna be me. We were going to sing to each other for the first time at the wedding, but she saw my papers and didn't want to wait.”

“That's sweet, that's real sweet,” Morita said and the Howlies chimed in. Only Dum-Dum looked a little sad, looked down and away.

“Is that what you're waiting for with your Agent Carter?” Falsworth said, nudging Steve's elbow. His thin eyebrows waggled over his grin, but Steve thought he caught Morita giving Gabe a strange look. “Hmm? To sweep her off her feet with a ballad at the altar?”

“No,” Steve coughed, then again, “ _No._ ” He couldn't imagine taking a risk like that, even if it was someone you knew like the back of your hand, someone you felt like you'd known all your life. Gut instincts could be wrong. Being in love didn't mean it was meant to be.

“Mais tu vas chante pour elle, non?” Jacques said, leaning in on his elbows.

“I'm...” Steve ducked his head and came up smiling, lopsided but there. He wanted to. Peggy looked at him sometimes in a way that made his throat hurt from wanting to sing. Hell, Bucky had even given his blessing, which...well. Was good. “Yeah, I'm going to sing to her. Someday.”

“Congrats,” Morita said quietly as Dum-Dum reached over to thump him on the back. Steve looked at him but Dum-Dum asked, “Which song? You got a plan?”

This was the part they weren't going to be on board with, the part that made Steve glad Bucky wasn't back yet from patrol. “It's dumb,” he said.

“Then pick a different song,” Dum-Dum said with a roll of his eyes. Steve had a feeling if he weren't their commanding officer he would be subject to quite a few of the boys trying to ruffle his hair.

“I like this one,” Steve said, “It feels right.”

“Honest, Cap,” Gabe told him with a soft laugh, sausages hissing as he turned them over the fire. “if it's meant to be, won't matter what you sing.”

Monty immediately jumped in with a story about his own father who got so nervous he belted 'God Bless Our Gracious Queen,' and Steve hoped they'd be diverted, that they'd leave it alone.

“Do we have to bribe it outta you?” Morita prodded, leaning in. “C'mon, Cap, tell us the song.”

“Or sing it!” Monty cheered.

Steve groaned and hid his face. “No,” he said, “no, it's not gonna be good.”

“Je veux entendre cette chanson,” Jacques pressed with a grin, “Allez, chante pour nous, pour t'entrainer.” The boys chimed in, nudging and cheering him on despite Steve's protests and laughter, warming him up better than the fire could. Around them the woods were frozen silent, but here in this huddle of good men everything was wonderfully alive. Even with the circles under their eyes and the aches in their bones they were smiling, and Steve wanted more than anything to keep this memory forever.

“Fine,” Steve said, laughed, “fine!” He cleared his throat and threw himself to the wolves. “[ _My story is much too sad to be told—_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s06RUbCbYeo)”

The uproar was immediate and overwhelming, but Steve had never felt further from the butt of a joke in his life, buoyant on their laughter.

“Ho-ly shit,” Dum-Dum said, rocking back in his seat. “That is the worst idea I have ever heard of.”

“That's awful, her life isn't sad!” Morita pressed, eyes wide with earnest horror.

“It's not—It's supposed to be—” Steve tried, but was overruled and overwhelmed. Bickering back and forth was easy and kept his mind off being cold. And hell, he could still sing the song if he wanted, it wasn't like these punks were going to be around to stop him. He _liked_ 'I Get a Kick Out of You' because it was fun and a little cheeky, and he didn't have to sing the verse about cocaine, just the part about 'flying so high with some guy in the sky is my idea of nothing to do' and she'd laugh. The point was that he got the same flying feeling when he was around...when he was in love.

“Is Bucky back yet?” Steve asked, hating that he sounded like a broken record, but really, where in hell was—

The snowball smashed into his shoulder and shattered, spraying ice against his face like shrapnel. For a moment Steve thought it _was_ shrapnel, thought he was hit, thought the liquid seeping down the back of his neck was blood—but the second snowball caught him in the chest, white and harmless, and coming from above him.

The Howlies' roar of surprise and outrage seemed to fade like an old record, staring up at Bucky. He looked like a ghost.

This was the snapshot, a memory Steve knew he would keep for the rest of his life even as it happened: Bucky, face white as sleet, eyes shuttered off even though he was looking right at him; his uniform was nearly black against the branches of the tree, snow hanging in the air around him like a cloak, a saintly aura. He was so high above Steve, so tall, and smaller for it, so far away Steve felt for a moment like he would never be able to touch Bucky again.

A fault-line opened in Steve's chest. Bucky had heard him sing.

A lifetime of keeping his mouth shut. A hundred million ways he'd told himself why he shouldn't, why he never would—all of it vanished in a heartbeat. It was done. It was done in the most careless, heartless way imaginable, an _accident_ , not even—not even brave, not even _trying._ A hope he'd told himself to starve, and _now—_

“Bucky?” he called, and couldn't rightly say what his voice was doing. If Bucky could hear the fear in it.

Dum-Dum's halfhearted return-fire missed by a mile, snowball falling apart even before it bounced harmlessly against the tree. That more than anything seemed to bring Bucky back down to earth, even though it took him a long time, each handhold tested and his legs looking stiff. Steve watched with that fault-line cracking wider, carving into the fleshy part of his lungs.

And then Bucky slipped—just a little, not too far from the bottom—and suddenly moving was easy, breathing wasn't hard; Steve caught him with a hand on his back, said, “You okay, Buck?” and wondered why he felt so old, when Bucky looked so, so young.

“Just c-c-c-cold,” Bucky said.

Steve registered Bucky's words a split-second after he took in the expression on his face: exhaustion, pure exhaustion, his lips were fucking _blue._ Jesus, _Jesus,_ Steve's self-centered panic had nearly overwhelmed the fact that his best friend probably had _hypothermia_ , Jesus fucking _wept,_ Bucky's teeth were chattering in his skull.

Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky feeling like ten tons of worthless shit, but knowing he was the warmest thing in their camp outside of throwing Bucky directly in the fire. He dragged his dumb paws over Bucky's back, sat him as close to the campfire as he could, dimly aware when someone handed him a spare blanket to bundle around Bucky's shoulders. Dum-Dum's big furry hat landed on Bucky's head, drooped down almost over his eyes until Steve set it right. Bucky didn't seem to notice, just leaned into Steve like he did when he went drinking, or when he hadn't slept because of the nightmares he never talked about.

“Hate being cold,” Bucky mumbled between bites of sausage, food a little crispy but still hot from the fire. Steve had to duck his head close to hear the words, and then...and then he was too tired, too fucking heavy and stupid to move, there was no super serum yet invented that could give him the strength he needed to pull away.

“I know you do,” Steve said, because he remembered the way Bucky would look pinched and small when a draft snuck in under their door, or when the wind snatched at their hats and scarves, or when Steve's glove got a hole in it and Bucky stole it, made them switch. Bucky's head landed on Steve's shoulder, weighted and on the bone, but Bucky didn't pick it up again. He just ate, chewed, and swallowed.

Smoke from the campfire stung in his eyes; Steve blinked and blinked, didn't see a thing.

That little hope, that thing Steve told himself he'd never nourish and had lied, with such brutal denial that even as it ate the mortar of the walls he'd built he'd claimed to be a good person, the kind of person who would never want something from Bucky that Bucky couldn't give him.

So that part of him needed to be pulled out by the roots. And it would hurt, but it would be the right thing, for both of them.

 _Tomorrow_ , Steve told himself, stomach churning with half-burned meat. _Tomorrow you're going to let Bucky go, once and for all._

~*~

Bucky fell.

~*~

Bucky fell, Steve couldn't reach him in time, the railing gave way and Steve wasn't fast enough, Bucky fell and Steve couldn't save him, didn't save him, Bucky fell, Bucky fell, Bucky—

Bucky—

~*~

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes fell in the line of service.

He _fell._

Steve _let him fall._

~*~

Peggy found Steve in the bombed out remnants of the bar where they'd all shook hands and become the Howling Commandos. There was the chair where Bucky had sat and there was the bar top Bucky's hands had rested on and there was the space Bucky used to fill up, as charred and splintered and empty as this room.

Peggy looked blurry, and Steve knew it wasn't because of the three bottles of whiskey he'd finished off. “Dr. Erskine said that the serum wouldn't just affect my muscles, it would affect my cells,” Steve said, not even slurring, hearing his own voice like he was speaking from the bottom of some dark place. “Create a protective system of regeneration and healing. Which means.” He touched the last bottle, couldn't quite feel it even when he could see his fingertips against the glass. “I can't get drunk.”

Steve was supposed to be smarter than this. He tipped his head up to look at Peggy again. She felt far away too. “Did you know that?”

Peggy hesitated. God, she was—she was too much to look at all at once. “Your metabolism burns four times faster than the average person,” she said, which meant yes. Peggy knew a lot—Peggy knew everything—Steve wondered if she knew how much he loved Bucky.

He made a sound, maybe a laugh, and Peggy took a step toward him. It must've sounded pretty bad.

“I have this song stuck in my head,” he said, and didn't try to look at her, his eyelashes were too wet. She touched his hair; it felt nice, but also like he was crumbling to ash. “Just the one line, though. Over and over. Like the record's skipping. Just, 'I get no kick from champagne,' on a loop.” Her hand stilled a little before she started gently touching him again, even though he'd been so careful not to sing. “That's pretty dumb, huh? Bucky would've laughed.”

“Oh Steve,” she murmured and Steve thought: _Yes, yeah, she did. She knows, she...knew._ “It wasn't your fault.”

“Did you read the report?” he asked, and when she said _yes_ he answered, “Then you know that's not true.”

~*~

He crashed the plane.

He crashed the plane and the bombs were supposed to go off, supposed to make this painless and easy, but when they exploded they split the carrier in two, and the cockpit was driven forty feet into the ice. Or that was as close Steve could reason when he woke up, blood literally freezing around a gash in his forehead and his fingers so numb he wasn't sure they were still attached.

There was no light. When water started seeping in he only knew because his footsteps made faint—then louder—splashes.

He tried to get out. For Peggy, for Bucky's memory, he tried. And when he couldn't try any more he laid down. He couldn't even feel the cold.

 _Just like falling asleep,_ he told himself, and tried to sing his mother's lullaby but his lips wouldn't part, and he was so tired, so tired.

He fell asleep, like Bucky fell, suddenly and all at once.

~*~

Then he woke up.


End file.
